LA Timpa’s music video for his latest single “Core” starts with birth and ends in death. The Nigerian-born, Toronto-raised musician makes deconstructed dream pop that explores themes of love, dissatisfaction, isolation, and mortality, all through smeared vocals and haunting compositions, which loop and disintegrate with time, rather like life itself.
On “Core”, the 25-year-old – who recently completed NTS Radio’s artist development programme WIP – teamed up with Dazed 100 photographer Rosie Marks, whose own Alec Soth and Martin Parr-inspired imagery flirts the line between the mundane and beautiful. The video takes us through snippets of everyday life: a baby is born; two teens kiss against a graffitied wall; families pose with their shopping bags in Oxford Circus; a woman poses with her pregnant belly, and so on.
Yet, it’s in between these mundane shots of life’s daily humdrum – people on the underground, children at a climate protest, a woman getting fillers, elderly people playing cards – that we’re reminded of Timpa’s central message of love. “I reach for your love / And ask for an answer from you,” his voice distorts and ripples across the track, which is taken from his forthcoming LP, Equal Amounts Afraid.
“I found out about Rosie's work through a close friend/collaborator Taylor Thoroski and absolutely loved the feeling it gave me and had already identified with it,” he tells us. “We met shortly after and sent her the album in the purpose of us working on a video together, Core became the track she was most drawn to for a visual piece. The general idea behind it is our life cycle.”
As “Core” draws to a close, so do the lives of the subjects in the video. In the final shot, we see a body being cremated, and as the camera zooms into the flames, we’re reminded that life is precious, and before you know it, over.
Watch the video “Core” above. Equal Amounts Afraid is set for release December 6, which you can pre-order here.